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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Home Ec has changed since I was a kid toiling away in the Kumquat
Kitchen (they really called it that in honor of the color of the counter
tops!). These days it’s called “Family and Consumer Science”, but the kids call
it “sewing” or “cooking”. Each of these units last 8 weeks, but are required
classes for the two years of middle school here in south central PA.

When my first child traveled through the curricula of
cooking, I was flabbergasted to listen as he regaled what he learned to cook!
Smoothies! (is this actually cooking? Isn’t it just “chop, drop, and press the
button”?) Coffee drinks! Cake Pops! Cookies! Pancakes! Brownies! It seemed as
though if it contained sugar, it was on the menu. By the end of the semester I
felt confident that my son could hold his own behind the counter at Starbucks.

Now as my daughter works her way through the same classes,
she corrects me as to the proper names of the cooking instruments. “It’s not a
spatula, it’s a turner, mom.” As if I am too ignorant to be trusted with
lifting the cookies off the sheet if I don’t even know the proper name for the flipper
I’m using! I informed her that the rubber spatula was actually called a “child
cheater” and she rolled her eyes and gave up. When I lamented that she wasn’t
learning to cook any real food, she protested, “But tomorrow we’re making
Cherry Crisp!” Ten to one the cherries come out of a can, loaded with sugar and
food dye, and there are no cherry pitters involved in this lesson.

I appreciate the districts efforts, truly I do, but as I
said before, Home Ec has changed. You can’t teach a child to cook in 8 weeks
when there are 30 or more kids in the class and you have no budget for fresh
ingredients.

Talk to a young adult these days and quiz them on their
cooking abilities. 9 out of 10 will tell you frankly, they don’t cook. And
really, they don’t. They reheat, they unwrap, they order out, they “chop, drop,
& press the button”, and many of them do not know much about cooking beyond
boiling a pot of pasta, and that’s being generous.

A wonderful young adult from my community has house sat for
us on several occasions. This is a former honor roll student, very bright and
articulate. When we arrived home from our last trip, she had forgotten to
remove her groceries from the week she spent at our house. No problem, I
gathered them all up for her. I have a large, well-equipped kitchen, yet every
single item required no more than a microwave to prepare. I don’t think she’s
outside the norm.

Much attention is focused on the children in this time of
the “obesity epidemic” in the US,
but take a look around and you’ll see those same children growing in to adults
who do not know how to eat healthy. The schools are certainly not teaching
them. Nutrition rears its important head during health class and occasionally
science, but I would wager to bet it’s not a vital cog in the home economics
curriculum where they make such great use of a blender.

If we want to stem the tide on this epidemic, we must equip
our children not only with the knowledge of what foods they should eat to be
healthy, but how to cook those foods. What I wouldn’t give for my daughter to
come home and announce, “We learned how to cook broccoli today without letting
it get mushy!” Sadly, I’m guessing those words will never pass her lips.

To that end, I instituted a new policy in my house for my
two Home Ec grads. One night a week they each are responsible for planning and
preparing dinner. My only guidelines
were – it needs to be balanced and it needs to include at least two vegetables
or fruits. My son took the news of
our new policy in stride planning a steady menu revolving around hamburgers. My daughter sighed and slumped and warned that I had
to eat what she cooked. Touché!

My husband
assists my son on his night. Being boys, several of the meals have involved the
grill. I assist my daughter and she has produced three delicious meals so far
that included her major food group - pasta. The first was fettuccini alfredo and
baked chicken fingers. I watched from the breakfast bar as she dipped and
breaded the chicken, wiping her hands after each piece. I said nothing. They
were delicious. Last week she made homemade pesto with the basil from our yard.
It was magnificent. The boys opted for plain noodles, but she was triumphant.

Cooking has a way of transforming my kids. It gives them
confidence and skills so that when the time comes they will be able to cook a
real meal for themselves and not subsist on frozen dinners. My husband calls my daughter the “apathetic chef”
doing a funny imitation of her attitude each week when we inform her it’s her
turn. “Whatever,” she says and pretends she doesn’t care. When we ask what she
would like to cook she again replies, “Whatever.” But then once she gets
started, her interest is peaked and she creates delicious meals. I doubt she
would ever volunteer to cook a meal before this trial began, but now I’m
certain that she will be cooking circles around me in no time.

My 10-year-old asked me last night if he could cook dinner.
I said, sure, and his eyes lit up. Whatever his older siblings do, he wants to
do, but more than that, he hears us having fun together in the kitchen and he
wants in on it.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Our road is closed for construction. We have effectively
lived at the tail of a long dead end street for the past month. At first we
lamented the extra four miles it would take to get anywhere. The kids chaffed
at the idea that their new bus stop was a ½ mile walk away. But as we near the
completion of the project, I have mixed feelings.

I’ve grown accustomed to the quiet. I like the absence of
traffic. I’ve enjoyed running in the early mornings, knowing the only cars I
will encounter are my neighbors who drive slowly past, waving to me and my dog.
I savor the silence in the mornings as I hang out the laundry and the peaceful
evenings on the screened in porch.

The detour has changed my life in other ways. I know longer
“run to the store real quick” for anything. I save up my errands and don’t go
“over the hill” (as my husband calls it) until I have to. It’s saved gas, but
more than that, it’s saved time. I had no idea how much time I’d been
squandering. Staying home more has led to a semi-clean house, a semi-weeded
garden, and even to semi-exercised horses!

I wonder if when the road is open again I will go back to my
frequent wanderings. I am grateful for the inconvenience of the state’s odd
choice of construction projects (they are replacing a grate that ferries a
teeny, tiny run-off stream under the road to join Deer Creek to the tune of
$900,000. The new grate could accommodate a small river.). I’m hopeful that my hermit
habit will stick. I like being home more and I’ve saved money, not just on gas.
When my oldest was stumped for what to cook on his night, he opted for hot
dogs. Having promised to provide him with all the ingredients he needed for his
culinary endeavor, I was obligated to go over the hill for the rolls. But as I
headed for the car, I thought, “Can I make hot dog rolls?” Yes! I can! Similar
scenarios played out again and again, as I made due or got creative with menus
and school projects.

Can you find the adorable dog watching?

We are all driving too much, wasting gas and precious time.
Perhaps a state enforced confinement isn’t the motivator you need to evaluate
how many times you run to Walmart. What if you couldn’t go out? Could you work
with what you have? Our road will open back up soon, but I’m going to try to
retain the new habits the detour has given me. I like the hermit life.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

All week I keep running in to the recent study being widely
heralded across our nation declaring that organic fruit, vegetables, and meat
are no more nutritious than conventional fruit, vegetables, and meat. So? I
think the study completely misses the point on organics. I don’t eat organic
because I think the food is better for me nutritionally, I eat it because it
doesn’t have pesticides, GMO
engineering, artificial additives, preservatives, and God knows what else in
it.

As a parent of a child with an incurable auto immune
disorder which has an environmental trigger that has yet to be identified, I’m
all about avoiding unnecessary chemicals. My
leanings aside, there have been MANY
studies indicating the potential danger of pesticides, artificial food dyes,
and GMO engineered foods. Beyond
that, no person with a fully functioning brain needs a study to tell them that
chemicals meant to kill insects are not something they want to be ingesting.

Beyond the nutrition and the chemicals avoided, I eat
organic fruits, vegetables, and meat because they taste better. I’ve done my
own studies, and the four other participants in my extremely local study agree
with me. Organic food tastes exceedingly better and we don’t need a
multi-million dollar study to tell us that.

Now, if you want to compare the nutritional value of locally
grown fruits and veggies with conventionally grown veggies shipped to me from
across the country, I would hypothesize that the local stuff is more nutritious
simply because it’s fresh. It hasn’t lost valuable nutrients in the process of
being stored and shipped.

I’ve come across this Stanford study in basically every
newspaper, periodical, and news web page I’ve opened this week. Which begs the
question, who’s paying for all this publicity? (And who funded the study to
begin with?) Could it be that conventional farming lobbyiests and food industry
advocates are desperate to turn the tide of public opinion? At my house, the
party that protests the loudest is typically the guilty party. Just a thought.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

We have a new barn cat. Well, actually we have a new barn
cat that used to be our house cat before he took to using my daughter’s room as
a litter box. Eww. I won’t embarrass her by saying publicly there’s a reason he
chose that particular room. I’ll just say that she’s the creative type. They
always say that a messy desk is a sign of a creative mind. Well, she’s VERY
creative.

Anyway, the cat is adapting to the barn now that his food
has moved up there, and he’s discovered that there is plenty of supplemental
food available with just the slightest effort. The mice that were living large
on the spilled chicken feed and barrels of horse feed are feeling a bit under
siege.

Back to the smelly room. Although we cleaned up each
accident as soon as it was spotted (so to speak), the smell became unbearable.
So this past weekend we borrowed a carpet cleaning machine from a friend
(thanks Allison!). After two solid days of unearthing, uh, I mean cleaning, the room, we discovered the
carpet and along with that plenty of places where the cat left its mark.

Not wanting to use the expensive, industrial carpet cleaning
solutions I found at the store, and having failed to eliminate the stink with
my favorite go-to cleaner vinegar, I sought out a natural carpet cleaner. After
spending way too much time reading organic cleaning blogs (who knew there were
so many!), I found a recipe that seemed to have the most reliable results. While
I’d like to give credit where credit is due, this recipe was on several sites
and I couldn’t really determine where it originated.

It worked like a charm and left the room smelling of
lavender. Of course, this morning when I was moving furniture back in to the
room, the other cat followed me in and curled up on the freshly laundered
carpet. I suppose it remains to be seen (and smelled) if we banished the right
kitty!